Space & Place
Space and place play an important role in dramaturgy.
Location is defined as comprising both place and space. Space (enactment) is taken to mean the physical actuality; place (an ordering system) refers to the methods and ideas by which individuals understand and employ that space.
Until recently, place has been a relatively static concept: a conventional auditorium where expectation is of a stage facing an audience with entrances and exits on either side. Based on a 19th century tradition, the place of theatre evolved during the 20th century. The Bauhaus movement (e.g. Walter Gropius), which did so much to shape modernist architecture, designed the total theatre that could be reconfigured for: the deep proscenium stage; the open stage of classical antiquity; and the full arena with audience on all sides with an aim to serve for assemblies, concerts, sporting events and plays… a maison de culture
“a flexible building capable of transforming and refreshing the mind by its spatial impact alone” – Gropius
The reality did not correspond with the dream: a space in which every configuration proved a compromise.
“an all-purpose hall is a no-purpose hall” - Guthrie
By the 1980s, a postmodernist approach displaced the Empty Stage theory. Lefebvre stated “space is never inert, transparent, never in a state of nature untouched by culture”. And Mike Pearson stated “I can no longer turn up to see the latest brilliant product by such and such in this arts centre where only yesterday I saw the latest brilliant product of others; a field ploughed to exhaustion.”
Non-designated spaces were now used. Performances take place in abandoned warehouses, swimming pools, and shop fronts (as well as bus and train stations). In 2013, Stark Theatre performed 100 at The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Church at Queen’s Cross. At the heart of the piece is a transient place. The location offered the same ethereal quality having once been a church in process of mutating slowly into a museum. A similar device had been used in Wilson’s Fences using the symbolism of the white picket fence. There is a symbiosis between the performance and the building realised by an historical yet revitalised place. The play-as-event belongs to the space and makes the space perform as much as it makes the actor perform. Although decoupling of the work from the site meant that the art work no longer functioned, the CRM was not left ‘without the work’: a proper relationship had been established adding to the building’s ordering system (having never previously been used for theatre).
Another more deliberate example of the passing over of place (the non-place) occurred at the OXO Tower in London, shown in the image. Built as a power station in the 18th century, it was converted into a cold store in the 1920s, before being refurbished into consumer and hireable space in the 1990s. In 1996, Forced Entertainment performed Quizoola within the OXO Tower. Sometime later, Primitive Science performed Icarus Fallng in the exact same space but in the place where the audience had hitherto been. The resultant effect was to imply a completely different space to any individual who had witnessed both performances. In each instance, the space was optimised to feed into the performance, sharpening character definition and adding depth.
As the drive for naturalism continued, technology changed. The ‘white light’ brought problematic exposure. In 1907, Stanislavski addressed the problem of coarse scenery using black curtains which, in the 1960s, went on to become the dominant spatial form of alternative theatre with lighting that could make the performance space seem as small or as expansive as the director desired. Technology has been recognised as a way to access particular qualities within a performance, inadvertently disrupting the hierarchy of theatre (and the classical unity of place) by extending space over place to the non-place at the periphery of communications. In 1994, Sabell & Hartzell used the internet as a live art medium to perform Village Voice comprising live heart beats and a Q&A email interface conveying a metaphysical state of character. In 2001, a theatrical performance, Spectropia, was produced by Toni Dove where a feature film included interactive components. In it, the performer becomes the viewer existing in the eyes of the character. The physical space of the narrative – most obviously located on the screen in front – related the interiority of the character to the performer which is transferred to the audience.
In each case, the objective is to realise through naturalism, a fully immersive experience. To summarise, space and place can be used to: project naturalism (The Homecoming); inject naturalism (Village Voice); heighten naturalism through integration (100, Spectropia).
The seeds of naturalism have blown across the 20th century and are still taking root in the theatre of today.